Interview: You're Ian Brown ... do something!

The singer of the Stone Roses did not die with the group: his single is in the Top 5, and an album is on the way. Nick Hasted talked to Ian Brown.

Ian Brown blew the walls down. In 1989, the debut album of the band he sang with, the Stone Roses, gave British music its ambition back. It gave it back to the working class, to the baggy-trousered Manchester lads half the country under 25 was soon dressing like. It restored the legacy of the Sixties to pop, with John Squire's guitar, and revived it with the energy of rave. Primal Scream, the Verve, Blur and Oasis are among the bands that wouldn't exist as they do now without the Roses.

Oasis only wanted to be bigger than the Beatles. The Stone Roses were as good as them. When the epic dance-rock single "Fool's Gold" was released, it gave rock music a future. They were revered like no band since The Smiths.

It's all a long time ago now. In the Nineties, the Roses were pulled apart by court cases, a five-year wait for a disappointing second album and departing members, till only Ian Brown remained. He dissolved the band amidst bitter, embarrassing scenes. John Squire, seen as the Roses' heart, formed the Seahorses, a popular, unambitious guitar band, and that seemed to be that. Until Ian Brown came back. His first solo single, "My Star" has just entered the Top 5. His album, Unfinished Monkey Business, though it lacks the majesty of the Roses, contains their spirit. Unbowed, unashamed to experiment, it reminds you why you once adored Brown.

And here he comes, down the record company corridor, with that old-time baggy lope. When he sits down, you notice the sunken cheekbones, the constant, accepting smile. Most of all you notice the eyes, remarkably warm. When Brown speaks, he's precise and erudite, given to phrases that would once have been called "loved up", but revealing a sharp, uncluttered intellect. He insists on being positive.

It's a mindset that began in Warrington, with his parents. His father was a man who, if he saw a wrong, would say so, and Brown was raised unafraid. His heroes included Muhammad Ali and the Sex Pistols, but he drew his inspiration from other sources, too. Asked about the title of his new album's first track, the Situationist slogan "Under the Paving Stones: the Beach", he raves about the movement, and in passing dismisses Freud, Nietzsche, Einstein and almost the whole of Western philosophy, as if, at some earlier date, he sped through it and spat it out. That title is how he's always seen things. "When you live in Manchester and it's raining every day, you've got to imagine the sun, sometimes. When you're brought up in concrete, you aim for the green leaves. And when you get to the green leaves, you yearn again for concrete."

One abiding memory of the Roses is their arrogance in the face of authority, their self-belief. And yet, Brown claims, they never wanted to be stars. They wanted to bring the whole notion crashing down. "I wanted to try to finish the idea that pop stars were important, that what they said was gospel," he remembers with venom. "Putting another human being above yourself isn't healthy. I think it's capitalistic. Stardom's transitory, nothing really changes, except people's attitudes. You pick a cigarette up and 10 hands come forward to light it for you. It's obsequiousness, deference. I don't believe in any of those things." What does he think when he sees Liam Gallagher on stage? "I think he's a character. But he's a young kid, and he's always thinking about drugs, and that's not a star to me."

The changes in British music since the Roses' peak aren't only in attitudes to stardom. For all the excitement bands such as Oasis have offered, their unwillingness to risk originality, the acceptance everywhere that a well- played tune is all music needs to be, feels wrong. There are times when it feels as though a betrayal like "Fool's Gold" showed the way to the future, and all people want is the past. Brown nods. "Yes, definitely. I agree with that wholly. We were trying to move forward, and now it's gone back to the Sixties, and wishing you were the Beatles. The Beatles were great; we know that. But we were trying to do a new thing. Why do we need to recreate the Sixties ?"

In the five years that the Roses took to release their second album, an almost mystical hope that they would return to save things, to fulfil the promise of "Fool's Gold", gathered round them. But during those five years, something went wrong. Second Coming showed the Roses themselves sinking into the past, swamped by John Squire's rock guitars. Brown still expected the band to continue, until a curt resignation phone call from Squire, his childhood friend, told him those dreams were over. It's the one thing he can't forgive.

Did the hurt change him from the open man he once was? "I don't feel so. I know it should do. It's the manner in which John went about it. We've come from nowhere, we've been together for years. And then it's a phone call that finishes it. Something like that is brutal. It's not the way life should be. For weeks, when I heard a Roses record, I just felt sad. What a complete waste of time." He considered becoming a gardener - it seemed more honourable. What changed his mind? "The people around me. Friends, musicians. Kids that came up to me saying, `You're Ian Brown. Do something.'"

`My Star' (Polygram) is out now. `Unfinished Monkey Business' is released on 2 February.